A European consortium including Airbus, Eurocopter, and Cobham participated in a multi-year project to design equipment and instrument aircraft with a lightning detection system. The goal of the system was to measure lightning transients in-flight, and to help maintenance crews locate potential lightning damage on the aircraft after a strike. The measured data from the system would be invaluable to scientists and engineers who seek to further the lightning protection design of aircraft. The full report is available at the link below: ILDAS Paper...

New video from the Discovery Channel that investigates the loss of aircraft and ships in the Bermuda Triangle. As part of the show, lightning tests were conducted at Lightning Technologies on a Cessna 310. Ed Rupke of LTI in Pittsfield, MA administers a series of high voltage tests using a 2.4 MV Marx generator onto the aircraft to show that lightning can strike the wing tanks. See the video...

A strike to a New Zealand airport left the runway lighting system in tatters. The strike must have attached to the power system feeding the lights and traveled down the wiring. From the news article description, 34 of the lights were ejected from the soil and some of them ended up meters away. Read the full news article here:...

Unfortunate news from Vilano Beach, Fl. A man flying a kite along the coastline and was struck by lightning. A nearby Samaritan performed CPR on the man until help arrived and the kite flyer is in stable condition at the local hospital. Ben Franklin was lucky to live through his kite flying experiment in 1752 and this modern day Franklin is also fortunate to be alive. Read the news article here:...